Microsoft Research details prototype data center robotics efforts

Microsoft Research has given a glimpse at some of its prototype data center robotics efforts in a paper for Hotnets. The team said that "this marks the beginning of a fundamental shift in how we conceive and design data center hardware and the software services," but noted that the effort was "at the very start of this journey."

Microsoft said the key to the robotics project was not to try to recreate humans in robotic form. "We simply do not believe that the humanoid form factor or a hand-inspired gripper is suitable for most tasks in the data center," the paper states. However, the company believes that it makes sense to make multiple "advanced modular" robots that are designed for highly-specific tasks. Those tasks should ultimately allow the data center to clean and repair itself.

"We propose the concept of self-maintaining systems," the paper states. "A self-maintaining system is one that can manage and control its own hardware repair and maintenance. This is enabled through advanced robotics and automation. It offers the potential for fine-grained control of repairs, not only reducing the time window for a repair, but also helping manage the impact of cascading failures and false positives on repairs.

"An additional advantage is that currently very little data center hardware is proactively serviced, it is usually accessed only when it fails. This is due to scale (and therefore costs) and the issue of cascading failures. We believe dextrous advanced robotics design specifically to operate in the data center can also make proactive maintenance feasible, and thereby reduce the number of hardware failures."